Whether it is to be used on your website, social media profiles, printed marketing materials or somewhere else entirely – perhaps more likely a combination of the above – an effectively designed icon or logo can make a bigger difference to your organisation’s success than you might imagine.
As the most seasoned icon and logo designers know, there’s also a thin line between a perfectly designed one and one that’s merely “OK” or “sort of good enough”.
Here are three of the attributes to be guided by when designing an icon or logo.
Form
This attribute can be defined as the icon’s underlying structure, or how it is made. If you ignore the icon’s finer details and merely draw a line around its major shapes, what forms emerge? Are there circles, squares, triangles?
Primary geometric shapes like the above provide a visually stable foundation for the design of your logo. It is on such a foundation that greater detail can be provided, but we would advise against any more detail than what is needed to communicate what you need to communicate with your logo.
Aesthetic unity
The elements contained within your icon or logo together determine its level of aesthetic unity. These elements may include the likes of square or rounded corners, the size of the corners, the line weights, the colour palette and more.
Aesthetic unity may be a factor of particular concern to you if you wish to design a set of icons tied together by a consistent visual language – for example, a tendency towards rounded corners or ‘earthy’ colours such as browns and reds.
Recognisability
This attribute is about the ease with which the viewer can identify the object, action or idea that the logo is supposed to depict – in effect, the essence of the logo as a whole, rather than merely its component parts.
You may design a logo that most viewers would recognise as representing an animal such as a fox or an owl, for example, due to the inclusion of the visual elements that would generally lead them to this conclusion.
Are you anxious to ensure that your organisation’s logos and icons represent a good fit for your desired visual identity and wider objectives? If so, contact the Piranha Designs team today about our highly rated brand identity and graphic design services and expertise.
